


By the Root

by ba_rabby



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Body Modification, M/M, Science Fiction, Trans Male Character, Violence, transgendered!Eames
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2014-11-07
Packaged: 2018-02-24 13:42:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2583434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ba_rabby/pseuds/ba_rabby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ariadne didn’t want to leave La Rêveuse. She had been struggling to get a permanent piloting job for years and this ship was probably the best she could hope for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the 2014 Inception ReverseBang. 
> 
> The art that inspired this fic is a lovely piece by arvyy (Link TBA). 
> 
> Thanks to sneaqui and pushdragon for their tremendous help with beta-reading this fic (digital hugs). They were fantastic, so any remaining errors are my own.

Ariadne reread the results scrolling through her implant and then peered into the blackness again. The radar detectors were picking up a foreign signal from close by. But when Ariadne looked out to where the ship’s AI said the signal had originated, there was nothing but the ink-black of space. Her ocular implant, which saw further than any telescope, was coming up empty.

She frowned and sent out a radar signal of her own; a broad sweep that would spread like ripples in a pond. If someone were close by, she would pick them up.

A neighboring ship wasn’t something to raise the alarms about. The asteroid belt was overrun with miners and prospectors this time of year, when the system’s sun was relatively quiescent. But for the most part, the ships ignored one another. Since joining _La Rêveuse_ , the only time she’d made contact with another ship in The Belt was when they were on a collision course. (Negligence on the part of the other vessel, of course).

The bridge bulged out of the ship’s fore-end like an angular glass bubble, the bridge-wing airlocks were tucked into the sides like gills. This layout afforded Ariadne a nearly two hundred and seventy degree field-of-view. If she weren’t strapped to her pilot’s chair, it would feel as though she were outside. Though it was tempting, if she even thought about floating around in the bridge and smudged the glass Captain Cobb would have a conniption. Now though, all Ariadne could see before her was the asteroid they had been mining for the past few months; the view wasn’t always impressive. Eames was down there scuttling over the pitted landscape in his insectoid rig, illuminated by _La Rêveuse’s_ floodlights.

Ariadne’s scanners came back empty just as the radar detector picked up another incoming signal. It wasn’t a sweep from another ship. It was a straight beam. She hesitated for a moment, then made a call to the Captain’s Quarters.

Mal’s groggy voice came in through Ariadne’s interface, “Yes?”

“Captain. Can you come up to the bridge, please?”

There was the sound of fabric shuffling in the background, “Are you having trouble with something?”

Ariadne grimaced. She was not so new as to call the Captain up for difficulties holding the ship steady. “No. I’m fine. I’m just getting this—signal. I’m not sure what it is. Thought it might be best if you have a look at it.”

“What do you mean ‘signal’?” Mal asked, sounding far more alert.

“The radar mics are picking up a incoming pulse but—“

“I’ll be right up,” she said and cut the line.

“Alright then,” Ariadne said to the dead air.

Mal was at the bridge surprisingly quickly. She drifted to the seat on Ariadne’s left and the ship’s AI automatically strapped her in. “Let me see,” she said as she set up her holo-projector.

The plug connecting Ariadne to the ship’s network pulled taut as she typed into the screen on her wrist and gave Mal permission to piggyback on her interface. Ariadne’s vision blurred for a moment before it cleared and Mal’s face was illuminated by a projection of Ariadne’s ocular implant. Mal enlarged and prodded at the info boxes and what Ariadne saw changed in response.

“How long has this been going on?” Mal asked.

“I’ve only noticed it a few hours ago, but I think,” Ariadne pulled up the radar detector’s log, “it’s been going on for much longer. The frequency’s been fluctuating, so I didn’t pay attention at first.”

“Patch me in to Eames,”

Ariadne manually provided permission again and winced when Mal’s voice came in through Ariadne’s ears and reverberated in her skull as she called down to the asteroid. “Eames.”

The mining rig below them froze and Eames’s voice channeled through Ariadne and out of the comm system. “Problem, Captain?”

“We’re being watched.”

A beat. Then, “Shit.”

“Pack it in.” Mal said, “Nice and slow. Don’t worry about the droids. Grab what you can and get aboard.” Ariadne frowned. Robots were expensive and the cargo hold was barely half-full. This wasn’t a corporate vessel with regular paychecks from some head-office. On _La Rêveuse_ , they got paid only if they finished the job.

“Aye aye,” Eames said and then his signal cut out.

“Call the engine room,” Mal said to Ariadne, “and send out another sweep. Do it at nine hundred.”

Ariadne glanced at her in the low light, “You’ll get a lot of noise.”

“I know what I’m looking for.” Mal replied.

Ariadne shrugged, sent out the sweep and called down to the engine room. “Arthur? Power up the engines.”

There was a lag and then Arthur said, “Problem?”

“Shipping out. Captain’s orders.” Through her interface, Ariadne felt the engines heat up just as Eames’ rig began crawling up the towline tethering the asteroid to the ship. A flock of ore-laden droids trailed behind him.

The AI processed the sweep and came back with something. A lot of things, dust clouds for the most part, and also what the AI interpreted as a ship-shaped clump. Mal ran an analysis. Images of different vessels flickered before Ariadne’s eyes before there was a match. Pelican-class by the look of it. Very small, very nimble but with a cargo system that could stretch out when filled, hence ‘pelican’. It was a newer vessel designed and manufactured by Cobol United and it was alarmingly close.

Ariadne swallowed and called the engine room, “Hey. I’m gonna need the ion engines up too, if you can manage it.”

Another lag, then, “Yep.”

She patched through to Eames, “You on yet? We need to jet.”

Eames came in, “I’ll be on the bridge in a jiff.”

Ariadne sent Yusuf a quick message via the ship’s interface network: whatever he was doing would need to be stowed. Once done, she focused her attention to releasing the asteroid and heaving the towline.   

That was apparently the signal to the other ship that they had been waiting long enough. There was a sudden flare in the distance, and though the ship itself was still invisible, the ignition of a chemical rocket was something any pilot could recognize.

“Turn hard to port,” Mal said.

The turn was painfully slow, like the ship was moving through molasses rather than a vacuum. “Arthur?” Ariadne radioed the engine room.

“That’s all you’ve got to work with,” he replied, slightly out of breath. The roaring of the room nearly drowning out his words, “The engines aren’t finished warming up yet.”

Ariadne blew out a breath and centered herself.

The proximity sensors blared; the bridge was filled with noise and a flashing red light. They’d barely turned forty degrees. The approaching ship was visible now. A flat wide thing that curved like a mouth, fire spewing behind it.

On another ship, a smaller ship like the ones Ariadne was used to, the trickle of power from the thrusters would be enough to at least maneuver. But _La Rêveuse_ was massive and needed a massive amount of force to do anything.

A window popped up in Ariadne’s implant, displaying the sluggish increase in the engine’s revolutions. She didn’t need the numbers, Mal did. Ariadne could feel the engines through her connection to the ship.

Finally, the engine revs jumped and Ariadne made a ship-wide call, “Brace yourselves!”, then fired the rear and starboard thrusters. The ship pivoted neatly and then leapt forward.

Her implant highlighted approaching asteroids as the ship raced ahead. It required no more than a mental flick to change the direction of the thrusters, veering at the last moment in the hopes of shaking their pursuers.

“Careful!” Mal snapped after a close call, “This is not a skiff.”

It was true. Ariadne wished that Mal, who at least had the flight experience with _La Rêveuse_ , would plug in and lend her a hand. But she had the good sense not to voice that thought.

Mercifully, Eames managed to make it up to the bridge despite Ariadne’s piloting. Without a word he strapped himself into the remaining seat, reeled out his interface line and slipped it into his wrist. Another person on the network. Eames took over some of the steering and Ariadne focused on maintaining the speed.

They just needed to get out of The Belt. In open space, they could push the throttle beyond the thirty percent needed to make turns safely. Eames agreed with the sentiment and sent some calculations over to Ariadne and subsequently Mal.

“Do it,” Mal yelled over the alarm.

The Pelican, as though sensing their intention, doubled its effort, getting close enough to fire harpoons. Between Eames and Ariadne weaving and darting among the asteroids, they missed their mark, but it was a close thing.

Finally, they burst through the inner edge of the asteroid belt. The sun, a red giant named Yhi, was massive this close and the bridge windows automatically tinted in its brightness. _La Rêveuse_ hurtled towards the sun, her solar sails hoisted and soaking up power. The Pelican gained on them for a moment as the ion engines charged, and then they made a sharp turn, taking advantage of Yhi’s gravitational effects and letting it slingshot them out of its orbital plane and into deep space. Within moments The Pelican was another harmless speck at the edge of The Belt.

 

*****

They made it. They were fine. No one died. Still, Ariadne had trouble shaking off the jitters, feeling as though her muscles itched. Even later while helping with the cleanup, her hands still shook. Most the ship’s habitat was a mess, but Yusuf’s life-support system required the most work. It was essentially a small forest inside of the ship. The BioDome, he’d called it.

A droid hovered behind Ariadne as she picked up broken branches from a gangway that spanned the forest several metres above the ground. The smell of broken foliage was thick in the air and Ariadne had one of those bouts of nostalgia that Yusuf’s little experimental garden seemed to induce. Climbing trees with her sister.  Ariadne stared at a twig as it jittered between her fingers, lost in the memory, then shook herself. If she didn’t like Yusuf so much, she would suspect him of drugging them or something. No one should have so many feelingsin response to a bunch of trees.

She tossed another branch into the droid’s barrel. There were surprisingly no overturned trees. Though from what she understood, the trees that stood now were those that had survived previous ‘disturbances’. Yusuf was rigorous in his culling. The barest hint of disease or defect and the whole plant was removed from the breeding pool. “Not worth the resources”, he’d said.

Ariadne was curious about who had supplied those initial resources. Now that it was up and running, the BioDome paid for itself: food, clean air, and waste management all rolled into one. No filters to be changed, hardly any actual piping, just a complex network of roots. It would have needed tremendous financial resources to get started.

Leaves from the lower canopy brushed the top of Ariadne’s head as she ambled along, stooping to pick up any leaves and branches that hadn’t made it to the forest floor. Down below, the rest of the crew were supposed to be looking for dropped fruit. But it seemed that Eames and Mal were bickering again. On the bridge, Eames followed protocol and deferred to Mal, but outside he had no compunctions about giving her a piece of his mind. Ariadne stared at them wondering, not for the first time, if she could get closer without them noticing.

An arm draped over her shoulder startling her. “You did pretty well for your first time on the run,” Arthur said beaming.

“It’s hardly my first time in a chase,” Ariadne replied as she shrugged him off.

“No, but it was the first time with this beast.”

“Well, she handles like a cow.”

“But she can haul ass in a straight line,” he patted he gangway railing with a fond expression.

“Yeah, I guess.”

Arthur clutched at his chest, all wounded pride, “‘I _guess’_? Don’t tell me she’s not the most powerful thing you’ve ever flown.”

Ariadne snorted, “That’s only cause she needs to much force to move.”

Arthur shook his head, “I promise you, _La Rêveuse_ is the fastest thing you will ever fly.”

Ariadne rolled her eyes, typical engineer.

“Seriously.” Arthur said, his voice lowering conspiratorially, “I’ll talk to Mal. We’ll make some kind of arrangement. You _have_ to fly with all the taps open. There’s nothing like it. I promise.”

Ariadne hummed, not wanting to encourage Arthur’s delusion. They walked side by side for a while, tossing branches and leaves into the droid. “You know, awesome powerful speed aside” she gave Arthur a sly look and it was his turn to roll his eyes, “I’m surprised that chase lasted so long.” Arthur’s expression went flat and Ariadne felt a flare of guilt over her piloting. She added hurriedly, “I mean, pirates don’t usually waste their fuel on running someone down once they’ve lost the element of surprise.” Arthur gave her a curious look and she repeated, “It’s not my first time in a chase. Though” she muttered, “it would have been nice to get some help.”  

            “Eames got there as fast as he could.” Arthur didn’t pause in his work, but his voice was a little hard.

Ariadne looked at him, shocked. “God, no. Not Eames. No. He was great.” She shook her head, “No, just.” She sighed, “It would have been nice if Mal could have leant a hand. She had access to my display, it isn’t like she would have been flying blind.”

“Well, we hired you because she can’t pilot. That shouldn’t be news to you.”

“No,” she said after a beat.

They finished clearing the debris from the gangway and made their way down to the main level. The ground was covered in leaf-litter and was spongy underfoot. “Are you guys—you know, working on fixing that?” Ariadne asked, stroking the slick surface of her interface screen, “It’s fine for Mal when there are other pilots who can work, but it’s just you in the engine room. It must have been a hell of a lot easier when you could connect to the network.”

Arthur shrugged, “We’re working on it. Don’t worry about me.”

Ariadne studied him for a moment, burning with curiosity, but accepted that she wouldn’t get any answers if she asked too many questions. Mal and Arthur had problems with their ocular implants. It was just one part of the human-computer-interface that most people had. But pilots needed them to connect with their ships. Arthur managed by retrofitting droids with control panels to assist him in the engine room. But Mal couldn’t do a thing on the bridge.

Money was the most likely delay. It was hard enough for Ariadne to get the credits together for a software upgrade; she couldn’t imagine the cost of a physical repair. Finding a surgeon who could do it was another thing. One look at Eames’ interface, the raised keloids at the edges of his line port and screen, was lesson enough on the perils of surgery in the more backwater regions of the system. You did not want quacks messing around with your eyes. Of all the implants and surgeries she had to get in order to get her piloting license, the ocular implants had been the worst. She’d had to be awake when they removed her cornea and replaced it with the synthetic tissue branched through with diodes and circuits. It was like a kind of torture. So, no. You didn’t let someone unqualified mess with your eyes.

Eames and Mal were finishing up their ‘discussion’ just as Ariadne and Arthur drew near. Ariadne narrowed her eyes. “You were practically on the other side of the BioDome.”

Arthur hummed in agreement.

“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” Ariadne said indignantly.

“You wanted to,” Arthur replied. Ariadne looked away and Arthur chuckled, “It’s always pretty tempting. But” he said as Mal strode off, “nosiness tends to backfire in close quarters.” He gave her a pat on the shoulder, “That bin looks pretty full. You should take it over to Yusuf,” When she glared at him he gave her a gentle push, “Off you go.”

Ariadne rolled her eyes, but gestured to the droid. It to trundled behind as she went over to Yusuf’s…science piles. She glanced back in time to see Arthur plant a kiss on Eames’s temple as he said, “Hey big guy.”

 

Yusuf’s science piles were…aromatic.

“Hey,” she called.

Yusuf’s head popped up. He was in his coveralls and covered in leaf bits. “Ah, more for the heap,” he said as he spotted the droid laden with detritus.

Ariadne helped him top up the compost pile to his specifications. “Explain to me why we can’t just toss them onto the ground.”

“Oh the stuff that made it to the ground will get cycled back into the system. Circle of life and all that.” He waved a hand. “I just couldn’t justify actually _cutting_ branches for this little experiment,” he gestured to his piles, “It’s more of an attempt to get something good out of a bad situation.” Ariadne grimaced. It hadn’t been _that_ bad of an escape. They’d made it. Yusuf added, “Oh don’t worry about it. It’s life in space. Sometimes you have to travel in a not-straight line.” He glanced up at the closest tree. “Anyway, I’m very proud of them,” he placed a palm on its trunk, beaming at it.

“Your little babies have all grown up?”

Yusuf chuckled, “Something like that. But more importantly, I can market them as ‘able to withstand the perils of novice pilots’.”

Ariadne glowered, “Have you ever actually flown this thing? Cause it’s kinda hard.”

“I’ve never ever _been_ on the bridge,” Yusuf said cheerfully.  

Ariadne scowled as she threw a branch into the pile against Yusuf’s very specific instructions, “I have been flying for years, you know.”

“Yes,” Eames said as he hip-checked her, “But you were pretty shaken up afterwards.”

“Whatever.”

“Truly. You were all green and horrified.”

“I was not.” Ariadne shoved him back

“Be that as it may. You did very well, Ariadne,” He said it with the kind of emphasis reserved for a child, but Ariadne couldn’t help but warm to the compliment.  

Embarrassed by her own reaction she shoved him again, “Go away, I’m helping Yusuf with his science.”

“Ooo, science.” Eames said, leaving Ariadne to get a closer look at the piles. “Will it be science that we can eat afterwards?”

Yusuf snorted. “No. This is science that will become saleable.”

“Oh, I like that even better,” Eames said.

They ‘helped’ some more before Yusuf shooed them away.

“No one’s trying to be patronizing, you know,” Eames said as they exited the Biodome and entered the metal and glass and plastic of the rest of the ship.

“It’s not like I don’t know how to fly. I mean yeah, there were some close calls, but this beast isn’t exactly built for banking.”

Eames smiled, “No. Which is why we’re pleased with how you did. She’s not easy in anything but a straight shot. And considering that you were under a teensy bit of pressure, your performance,” here he gave a mock half-bow, “was commendable. Trust me, you’ll appreciate the appreciation later when we’re getting on your nerves and you have to remind yourself why you like us.”

“Alright, sensei.”

Eames huffed a laugh. “Get some rest. The AI’s only piloting for a little bit. You’re back on watch in a few hours.”

 

*****

Eames was a brilliant pilot, but a lot of what he did was instinctual and hard for him to explain. So Ariadne approached Mal, and they met in the chart room a few days later to go over their run-in.

They fired up the room’s holo-projector and Mal searched through the ship’s records for footage of the flight. In the mean time, a projection of the ship’s flight path hovered in mid air, complete with a replica of the solar system. _La Rêveuse’s_ trajectory arced away from the back end of The Belt towards the first of the gas giants, Yemalla. Extending beyond that were the other five planets, surrounded by the moons humans had made their homes on. Ariadne prodded at Danu, where she’d grown up. The view changed, _La Rêveuse’s_ arcdisappeared as Ariadne dragged the cotton-candy-blue planet back and forth along its orbit. The other planets followed suit. There were two more planets beyond Danu, but they were far enough away from the sun that no one cared about them. There was mining to be had in The Kuiper Belt beyond those planets, but the volatiles contained there were hard to excavate and transport. Ariadne gave Danu a shove and the planets jettisoned through their orbits like beads on a string. The moons circled their gas giants like swarms of hornets.

“Stop that,” Mal said. But she was smiling when the image changed to a simulation of _La Rêveuse_ taking a wide turn in the asteroid belt. Ariadne sobered. From the outside, it was a terrible turn. “What do you think is wrong with this turn?”

Ariadne reversed and played it a few times before answering, “I banked too late.”

Mal nodded. “On a smaller vessel, it wouldn’t matter. But on a ship this size with a half-filled cargo hold, it’s dangerous. At these speeds you’re fighting against the inertia of millions of tons.” Ariadne frowned but nodded. Mal tapped on the table’s keyboard, “These are Eames’ turns and his engine patterns. Look at how he fluctuates through the thrusters. There’s a subtlety to flying her.”

She played some of Eames’ maneuvers. He banked far earlier than Ariadne would have if trying to evade an enemy. And in all three instances, he rotated with his turn so that when he accelerated again, the direction was completely random. It was far more effective at putting distance between them and their pursuers. 

“Space is spacious,” Mal said with a smirk. “Use it to your advantage.” They talked thruster ratios and throttles for another hour afterwards. Mal knew everyone of Eames’ tricks and the secrets behind them, having worked with him for years. By the end of it, Ariadne didn’t feel that she could fly like Eames. But at least when he did something that, for all intents and purposes, looked like magic she could figure out how he had done it.

Ariadne toyed with the simulation of _La Rêveuse._ It looked a bit like a bee: a roly-poly cargo hold astern, a bulbous bridge at the bow, and the habitat spinning just fore of midship. The fact that the radiation shield was gold-based didn’t help. “This must have taken him ages to master,” she said, raising and dropping the sails. They looked like wings.

“Not as long as you would expect. Eames has a very flexible style. He’s very sensitive to the ship.” She must have seen something in Ariadne’s expression because she added, “Not that you aren’t. Sensitive, that is. Eames has many more hours under his belt on many different kinds of ships. You’ve piloted, what? Ferries? Cargo boats?”

“For the most part. Yeah.”

“It takes time. And you’re doing well. This is not an easy ship to manage. Especially not on your own.”

“Do you miss it?” Ariadne grabbed the Pelican-boat from the hologram and looked up at Mal. “Flying?”

Mal gave a sad smile. “It is something I am very good at. So yes. I miss doing it.” There was something beneath the sadness. Frustration? Anger?

“Well,” Ariadne cleared her throat, “at least we got away with most of the cargo. Shame about the droids, but—“ she frowned,  “it’s weird that Cobol’s getting involved in piracy.”

Mal blinked, “Cobol?”

“Yeah.” Ariadne flicked her wrist and the Pelican spun like a top. “Cobol’s the only place that makes these things and they’re already on thin ice with the Council. Adding piracy to their docket is asking for trouble.”

“Oh. Right.” Mal began shutting down the projector. “I wouldn’t worry about what Cobol is up to. Like you say, the Council’s got their eye on them.” The Pelican flickered and vanished mid-spin.

“Yeah, but piracy is a little low, even for them.”

Mal hummed in agreement then stood and stretched. “Like I said. Don’t worry about it. We’ve got enough trouble on our own without worrying about political intrigue.”

“No. I guess not.”

*****

Mal had a buyer for their cargo before they even got into Yemalla airspace. The moon they were selling to, Sobo, had an off-world dock for vessels like _La Rêveuse_ and Ariadne jumped at the chance to join the selling party and go on-world. Well, they _would_ go down once Eames and Arthur got their asses in gear.

She hammered on their door again, “Mal’s getting pissed.”

“Just a minute, love,” came Eames’ muffled reply.

Then the door swung open to reveal an irritated Arthur. “Just come in,” he said. “He’ll keep pretending he has time if you’re not literally in front of him.”

“Who’d a thought?”

“Ha bloody ha.” Eames muttered. His dress shirt was open revealing his chest binder and a hell of a lot of tattoos. He cast around the room for a few moments before he found what he was looking for: a pair of suspenders. He and Arthur dressed alike when they weren’t in work jumpsuits: button-up shirts and trousers, belts and suspenders. Though Eames preferred his clothes cut looser than Arthur. And Arthur tended to go for a monochromatic look while Eames preferred every colour ever. So, not that similar. But so few people wore button-ups that it was a quaint, retro-look.

Judging from Eames’ current colour palette, he probably had more of a hand in decorating their room. The walls were papered, (with actual wall paper) in teal with white fleur-de-lis. It seemed more suited to a couple of old biddies home with knickknacks on every shelf. Ariadne’s walls were still bare copper. All her worldly possessions fit in a backpack.

“Going for the cowboy look are we?” Eames said, snapping her attention away from the wall.

“What?”

He patted at his throat, “Gonna shoot ‘em up?”

She touched her scarf and tilted her chin up. “I’ll have you know that this colour brings out my eyes.”

“Hmm. You could just as easily wear a shirt in that colour.”

“I prefer to combine colours with a bit more class.” She replied. When Eames pouted at her she rolled her eyes and said, “You done yet? Mal will probably stab you if you make her late for this meeting.”

Arthur snorted, “Not just Mal.”

“Alright, alright.” Eames said shrugging on an honest-to-god blazer.

Ariadne glanced at Arthur, hoping to lasso him into making fun of Eames’ dress style, but Arthur was smiling fondly. And he was wearing a vest. So, no help there.

 

Ariadne piloted the skiff from the dock to Sobo’s main dock: Port Carrefour. It wasn’t hard; the port was a massive plateau that towered over the city. But no one discredited you for having too many piloting hours.

Both humans and droids assisted with the final docking and then it was onto a gondola and down the side of the plateau in the pre-dawn. The city was a hazy nebula of lights in the plains that grew larger and larger, the lights flicking out as the sun rose. Yemalla, the gas giant Sobo orbited, was setting as the last stars winked out. Its massive face striped in yellows and reds and browns sinking slowly below the distant horizon. By the time they reached the raucous bustle of the city gates, the sun was bright in the sky.

Ariadne’s gaze was dragged from one thing to another. By the time she turned back to her companions she found them all giving her an indulgent smile and she flushed.

Mal pulled out a device from her dress pocket. An old-fashioned communicator, by the looks of it.  She typed into it and said “We’ll come find you when we’re done.”

Ariadne gave a loose salute. “Good luck.”

Mal nodded, then she, Eames and Arthur turned and headed down the main street towards their contact. Ariadne went in the opposite direction. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t been to ports before. She’d practically lived from port to port during the first few years after graduation from Flight Academy. It was the only way to weasel your way onto a contract. But after three months on _La Rêveuse,_ staring at the same four faces, she was just glad to see other human beings. Glad to walk in real gravity, not centrifugal forces. To walk recklessly without care. To see actual animals, she thought as a flock of red birds wheeled overhead.

The first thing she did was buy street food. Nothing was better than street food and the port side of the city capitalized on the pilots and captains who were desperate for anything other than texturized protein rations. Yusuf’s cooking was far superior to usual space-food, of course. But it was also incredibly green and apparently healthy. After she gorged herself on the local _fritey_ , greasy fritters and salty pork, she addressed her real reason for wanting to come ashore. The Library.

The Carrefour Library was a multifunctional building. Certainly there were records and information housed there, most of it pertaining to the history of Sobo and the only other Yemalla moon that had maintained its terraforming, Agwe. But it provided a point of access to interplanetary networks and databases without having to go through _La Rêveuse’s_ connection.

The Library had a number of stations providing anonymous network access to anyone with the credits to pay. Ariadne could access the network through her interface, but the thought of plugging into an unknown port was disconcerting. It was impossible to hack a human-computer-interface, the council wouldn’t have approved of them otherwise, but sometimes the port lines weren’t physically clean. So she worked the old-fashioned way and typed in her query.

The thing was, with a hundred and twenty five billion people in the system, typing someone’s name in a search bar without any other identification was like trying to find a black hole in the blackness of space. Ariadne had made an attempt to learn more about her would-be captain when Miles first contacted her nearly a year ago. That query had yielded over a hundred Mallorie Cobb’s and six of them had been pilots.

But now, having a face to go with the text search, she found some documents in mere moments. The top hit was Mal’s photo in a news brief. She was smiling next to a man Ariadne had never seen before, and a name she’d never heard: Dom Cobb. She blinked and scanned through the news brief. Then another. And another. It was many hours of reading and following links before she leaned back in her chair and stared at the computer in shock.

Apparently Mal, along with Dominic, who was her _husband_ , were researchers. Pioneers in the field of Interface Education. Using the interface system that was widely used throughout the system not only to enhance cognitive function, but also to actually transfer knowledge into the user’s brain. Since a lot of their work focused on piloting interfaces, they worked on a ship, called _Lucidité_. Ariadne blinked and searched for _La Rêveuse_. In the interplanetary vessel database, a vessel under that name had only been in existence for a year. Two months before Ariadne had joined the crew. Which was impossible because the life support system, its current iteration, was over ten years old.

She looked up Yusuf’s name and _Lucidité,_ and he had a news brief as well. The report stated that he was joining the crew of _Lucidité_ to embark on a decade long project to develop the closed-loop life support system for use on interstellar transport. It was all very science-y and wonderful, but Ariadne’s attention was drawn to the watermark in the corner of the photo. She clicked back to the photograph of Mal and her husband and the same insignia was there: Cobol United.

Ariadne sucked in a deep breath and clutched her head in her hands.

She thought about Mal, who was patient in a kind of motherly way, having dealings with Cobol. No one had dealings with Cobol. And then, there was this Dominic who had just disappeared. There was no death notice when she looked into it. But then again it was easy to die unrecorded when working in outer space. Hazard of the job. But, fuck.

She pulled out her search station’s port line, wiped the connector on the hem of her shirt and plugged in. Tetanus be damned. She downloaded as much of the information as she could manage. She saved the location of the documents that were too dense to skim, to read later.

Her terminal was facing the door, so she spotted Eames before he saw her. She frantically closed the search windows as he approached, his expression smug.

“Made the deal?” she asked quickly.

He made a mock bow. “They’ll be taking the load off our hands tomorrow and then we’re off for more riches and glory. In the mean time, I’m here to collect you for lunch.”

“That’s good. Great. I’m excited to get paid.” She smiled and packed her purse, not feeling hungry in the slightest. 

*****

They went to a restaurant. Ordered local meats and vegetables. Mal was buying, obviously pleased at the rate they’d gotten.

“It’s relatively high quality titanium and nickel.” She said between bites, “So the buyer took us up on our first offer. Which is good because that’s the only way we can compound the costs of having to—leave.”

“That’s good,” Ariadne replied.

“What did you get up to today?” Arthur asked.

“Oh, I ate. Wandered around.”

“I found her at the library, if you could believe it,” Eames said, amusement plain on his features.

“Oh?” Mal tilted her head. “Were you looking for something in particular?”

Ariadne shoved food into her mouth to give herself a moment, “I was—looking to see what the rates were. For the wildlife tours.” She gestured in the general direction of the outskirts of the city. “I heard they’re pretty spectacular. But I wasn’t sure how long they took.”

“You might have the time,” Mal said. “The cargo load is over the next few days and we’ll be needing all hands on deck for that. But after hours, you’re free to do as you like.” She smiled and Ariadne felt a mixture of queasiness and anger. “Yusuf would have jumped at the chance to see how the animals on Sobo. It’s one thing to see photographs bu another thing altogether to see them in the flesh.”

“Why didn’t he come down, anyway?” Ariadne asked.

Mal leaned back, apparently done eating for the moment. “I don’t think Yusuf has been planet-side for—oh, what four years? Five years?” She glanced at Arthur.

His cheeks were bulged with food when they turned to him. He nodded then swallowed, it looked painful, “About five years. Yeah,”

Ariadne gaped. “He hasn’t left the ship in five years? But. How does he?”

Mal shrugged, “The rotational gravity is very good. It’s one of the best, in fact. Good enough to keep him from really wasting, but it’s not really gravity. Staying in space for months and months without a break, it sets off a positive feedback loop. The longer you stay in space, the harder it is to go planet-side.” She drew a circle in the air with her finger, “The harder it is to go planet-side, the less likely you are to leave space. He does the bare minimum of exercise to keep his bones from becoming pudding, but it’s not enough.”

“I’ve seen him in the gym,” Ariadne replied, still in shock that Yusuf was effectively trapped in space.

“Yeah, but you’re in there every day for at least an hour,” Arthur said, “How often is he in there? A few times a week?”

“Why doesn’t he try harder?”

“I doubt that Yusuf actually cares,” Eames said. “He is married to his research and his research is in microgravity. I don’t think he’d ever leave it willingly.” He prodded at some of the food on his plate. “I think ‘over my dead body’ was the phrase he used, last time it came up.”

“Huh. Wow.” Ariadne couldn’t imagine being confined to space forever. She loved her job, but she loved being able to visit new places too.

The conversation meandered after that. Starting from Yusuf’s experiments, to recent Council decrees. Ariadne got into a heated conversation with Arthur about the merits of near-light-speed travel. Arthur claimed that the theories were sound. Ariadne argued that it was hardly worth the effort. Mal and Eames watched the debate with strangely amused expressions and had the gall to side with Arthur.

It was…nice. These people were nice. She couldn’t reconcile them with the kind of people who made deals with Cobol United. Regardless, she decided to work the cargo unload and broach the topic later. Despite her concerns, her job came first.

*****

It took only a week to complete the cargo transfer. The buyer, a stately woman by the name of Taiye, was so pleased by their efficiency that she threw in some hydrogen fuel cells on top of their payment.

They worked double time on getting the cargo offloaded. Ariadne and Eames worked the hardest, shuttling the ore pellets down to Sobo and launching back up empty for another load. She hadn’t had time to read more of the records from the library, but she’d certainly had time to think about it.

She realized that she didn’t want to leave _La Rêveuse_. Ariadne had been struggling to get a permanent position for years. And this ship was probably the best she could hope for. But still. Cobol.

Neither Eames nor Arthur appeared in any of the news briefings so she wondered if could provide some kind of outsider perspective. Now that the cargo was unloaded, they had a few days to themselves in Carrefour before they would ship out again. So she asked Eames out for coffee at a place near their hostel in the hopes of gaining clarity.

 

It was busy when she got there, but she managed to secure a table. The chatter was a bit overwhelming. But, she thought, it would provide some privacy. She ordered a coffee, found the links to the news briefs she’d found at the library and read. Yusuf’s advancements had to do with fungal-plant interactions. Mal and Dominic’s work had to do with modifying how the interface worked in the human brain. It was fascinating, and she was so intent on her reading that the rest of the cafe was a blur beyond the text of her implant. Someone in a suit sat across from her.

Ariadne smiled and blinked several times to clear her vision. Her smile fell and she froze when she saw that her companion was not Eames.

A woman in a tan checked suit sat across from her. Her eyes were cameras. No white of sclera, just solid black save for the blue-violet glint of UV filters on the glass. They were very well-placed, hardly disrupting the double fold of her eyelids as they flicked over Ariadne’s face. Ariadne swallowed.

"Uh," her gaze darted to the other patrons. They were all pointedly minding their own business. "Can I help you?"

The cyborg smiled. "Perhaps." Her voice, and it was certainly a ‘she’, sounded disconcertingly human. She gestured with a polite smile and the waitress reluctantly came over. Her hands were metal rods and ball-joints sprouting from the cuffs of her shirt.

"I will be taking over my friend's tab,” she said.

"There's no need--" Ariadne started.

"And I would like a pot of Genmaicha. If you would be so kind.” The waitress nodded and scurried away. Even though implants were common-place, the widespread appeal came from their subtlety, from their seamless integration with the human body. Cyborgs, people with visible, obvious modifications were uncommon and often employed as hired muscle in more unsavory circles.

"Look. I think there's been some kind of mistake. Thanks for taking care of my...bill, but-- “ She made to rise and the cyborg grabbed at her wrist, viper-fast.

"Please. Stay," she with that same smile, her grip alarmingly cold, "I think that we can perhaps help one another, Ariadne."

Ariadne froze. "You've got the wrong girl. I don't know--" The cyborg’s expression was flat, but her grip tightened. Ariadne looked away from the lenses. "What do you want?"

The cyborg released her grip and folded her hands on the table. They clicked as they touched. “I am looking for some colleagues. They are acquaintances of yours.”

The tea arrived and the cyborg poured it from the cast iron pot into a cast iron cup and took a sip.

Ariadne wondered how much of her mouth was biological, how much finely rendered silicon. Whether she could taste the tea at all. "I think you may be mistaking me for someone else—“

“Were you surprised to learn that _La Rêveuse_ had flown under a different name?"

Ariadne blinked.

"The fact that you searched with those kinds of parameters suggests that you are not as privy to your ship's history as you wished you were."

Ariadne tried to use her interface to contact Eames, but she couldn’t connect to the cafe’s network. The cyborg reached into a coat pocket and placed a small box, no bigger than a wallet, onto the table.

“I would not trouble myself with calling your employer for aid if I were you,” she said. A signal jammer then. Ariadne’s insides went hollow. The cyborg continued, “My employer has made… financial contributions to projects run by the Cobbs and Mr. Hamied. These contracts were violated and…compensation is required.”

"Cobol."

The cyborg inclined her head in agreement. When Ariadne said no more, she swirled her tea round in the tiny cup and said, “When you are done with your drink, you will take me to Captain Cobb.”

"Why would I do that?  She’s my--"

"Friend?" The cyborg arched an eyebrow. “They lied to you. Or at the very least withheld pertinent information that could negatively impact your career as a pilot. By even being associated with them, your standing with the Council is compromised.” At Ariadne’s panicked expression she raised a hand, placating. The bare metal provided little comfort. “Not blacklisted, of course. But it wouldn't take much to do it. To blacklist you." Ariadne was about ready to argue when the cyborg continued, “And do not delude yourself into thinking you have a choice in the matter, Miss Wheeler.”

The cyborg drank her tea and Ariadne tried to look everywhere but at the camera eyes: the cyborg’s pin-straight hair which was cut into a black bristling buzz-cut, her sharp cheekbones, the other patrons still ignoring them, her own drink getting cold. There was a final clink of metal. The waitress was summoned and paid.

“We will leave now.” The cyborg pocketed the signal jammer, levered Ariadne up and frog-marched her out onto the street by her arm. “You will take me to the hostel. If you give me the run around, I will shoot you. Do you understand?” This close, when Ariadne look up at her she could see how the lenses of the cyborg’s eyes pulsed and spun.

Ariadne walked to the hostel. What else could she do?

She glanced around, pleading with her gaze, but no one looked at them. One look at the cyborg’s eyes, black as a shark’s, would make anyone turn the other way. Ariadne entertained the idea of running, but she imagined that the cyborg would rather rip her arm from her socket than let her go. 

They were getting close and Ariadne felt sick to her stomach. Two men were arguing close by, loud enough to penetrate the fog of fear. The raised voices got closer and closer until the men fighting were suddenly in the walkway. The cyborg pulled up short as the men shoved at one another. One crashed into Ariadne, the other into the cyborg, and they both tumbled to the ground. The cyborg’s grip fell away.

Ariadne’s other arm was grabbed. She struggled until she caught a flash of burnt orange. She let Eames drag her to her feet, and they ran.

 

They didn’t talk as Eames wove them through the crowds, down side streets to main-ways. They paused for a moment in an alley. Eames peered out around the corner. Ariadne, now free of the signal jammer, called up a map of the city.

Eames turned back to her, “We’ve got your things. Mal’s got a shuttle waiting for us.” He rubbed at his mouth. “You alright?”

Ariadne nodded, her breath still coming in bursts. “There are—“ she panted, leaned against the wall and closed her eyes, the ocular implant played against the black of her eyelids. “We can follow some minor streets down to the ferry station.”

They were at the edge of the commercial district when Ariadne’s GPS started shorting. “Eames.”

“I know.” He doubled his speed; Ariadne was truly struggling to keep up now. But the signal became stronger again.

It felt like they had been running for hours when they finally passed through one of the lesser-known city gates. There was the familiar whine of a ship engine on idle and then they caught sight of Mal pacing and frowning at her communicator. When she spotted them, her expression becames relieved and she turned at yelled into the cabin of a small quadropter.

Eames and Ariadne were just at the edge of the landing pad when Ariadne’s signal went out again and they bolted. A wall of flesh and metal slammed into them and they flew in opposite directions. Mal was by Ariadne’s side in an instant, all but dragging her away while Eames struggled with the cyborg. They squeezed past Arthur and Mal shoved Ariadne into a seat just as gunfire erupted.

Eames thudded into the quadropter and, his face a knuckles bloody, scrambled into a seat. Arthur yelled something to the pilot and the engines became a roar and they jerked upwards.

Arthur made his gun disappear and immediately helped Eames strap himself in.

“Are you alright?” Mal said as she gave Ariadne a once over, hissing and frowning at the ring of bruised skin on her bicep. “We’ll get Yusuf to have a look at that.” She tilted Ariadne’s face up and repeated, “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.” Only then did Ariadne realize that her hands were shaking. She leaned forward, wrapped her arms around herself and pressed her palms against her belly. Mal rubbed at her back as they jettisoned along the slope of the plateau.

She was still shaking when they strapped into the skiff on their way off-world. Eames, grim-faced, took over the piloting. Ariadne didn’t argue. While they waited for the clearance from air-traffic control, her stomach roiled at the thought of the cyborg pursuing them up to the port.

But when Eames launched them into space, no one chased them.


	2. Chapter 2

Eames’ face was properly swollen by the time they returned to  _La Rêveuse_ and he was angrier than Ariadne had ever seen it. No one talked the entire flight, save for Mal who called ahead to Yusuf. Her conversation was stilted as though trying to say things without actually saying them. Once the skiff was stowed they went straight down the core of the ship, parting ways with Arthur at the engine room. Eames and Ariadne and Mal crawled over the rungs of the hallway towards the bridge.

Mal piggybacked through Eames’ interface to radio the Port Master. It was just as well. Ariadne was having enough trouble focusing and Mal peering over her mental shoulder wouldn’t help things.

They puttered out to the launch canal to await the final clearance. The ‘canals’ were meant to guide incoming and outbound vessels and there were no limits to the sex jokes conjured up by flight students. Ariadne smiled up at the rings of light eclipsing Yemalla, and felt a pang of longing, suddenly missing her friends from the academy. The worst that happened in their company was inadvisable amounts of drinking and the subsequent hangovers. There were no guns.

The station made their final call; the light to their canal went green. Once they were clear of the station Ariadne said, “Coordinates, Captain?”

Mal was quiet for so long that Ariadne turned to her. She was sifting through the holograms of Eames’ implant display. When the silence dragged on, Eames said, “We should probably make our way to Benzaiten now. I’m tired of waiting.”

Mal sighed. “We don’t have enough—“

“Sod the money. They won’t chase us there. They wouldn’t dare.”

Who orbited Benzaiten again? Ariadne tried to dredge up half-forgotten astronomy lectures. It was the third gas giant out, seven moons: Fujin, Inari Okami, Indra, Soma, Proclus, Bai Mudan, and Xihe. 

“Yes, they will.” Mal said, “It wouldn’t take much for them to figure out where we’re headed.”

“They can’t run us down if we’ve got _all_ the engines firing.”

Mal cast a sidelong glance at Eames. “I will not allow that in occupied space.”

“Fine. But we can get there in six, maybe eight weeks. We’ve already got Kimiko’s ear. We say we’re in shit. She’ll talk to her father. If we’re in luck he would even send an escort to meet us halfway. If we stay out of the lanes they won’t know _how_ we’re getting there.”

“Pull up the chart.” The hologram shifted to a top-down view of the system. After several moments of course plotting Mal said, “Alright.”

After the course was set, Eames and Ariadne unplugged and Mal shepherded them to the Med Bay. Ariadne had no more than some bruises and scrapes, but Eames’ lips and cheek needed seeing to. And once they entered the artificial gravity of the habitat, Ariadne could see that he was limping.

There was awkward silence as they made their way from the core of _La Rêveuse_ down the spokes that radiated from it and into the spinning habitat. Yusuf was gloved and had his supplies at the ready in the Med Bay. He looked between Eames and Ariadne and went straight for Eames. “What happened?” he said wearily.

Ariadne opened her mouth to speak, but then shut it. She was more interested in hearing what Mal or Eames had to say. There was a very long silence. Yusuf glanced up from where he was applying a compress to Eames’ face.

“Had a run in with a cyborg.” Eames cleared his throat, “It might have been Ren Hui.” Yusuf’s brows leapt.

He looked ready to ask another question but then Arthur stormed into the room, flushed and sweaty in an undershirt, his button-up draped over his arm. “How bad is it?”

“I don’t know yet,” Yusuf said as he shone a light in Eames’ eyes.

“Never fear, darling,” Eames gave a mock salute, “my handsome visage will be right as rain in no time.”

“Don’t be an ass. Did Yusuf look at hand?”

“Give us a minute, yeah?”

Arthur scowled but didn’t say anything else. They lapsed into silence punctuated.

Ariadne glanced at Mal, then Arthur, then back at Mal. “Who’s Ren Hui?”

There was a beat before Mal spoke, “A mercenary. A very good mercenary.”

“And she’s chasing us, why?”

Arthur crossed his arms and shifted. “We’re not exactly sure—“

Ariadne narrowed her eyes. “Cause that ship that was chasing us before was from Cobol and she said she’s working for Cobol. So I’m gonna hazard a guess and say its something to do with Cobol.” The others glanced at one another then away. Ariadne took a deep breath. “And she says that you and Dominic,” Mal’s eyes widened, “backed out of some contract with Cobol. And you too, Yusuf.” Ariadne crossed her arms over her chest, “So, ya know. Anytime you feel the need to tell me what the fuck is going on, I’m all ears.”

Mal took a seat on one of the stools. “What exactly did she tell you?”

“Why don’t you start with answering my questions first?” Ariadne hedged.

“Because,” Eames’ tone was cold, “there are some things you don’t actually need to know right off the bat.”

“Shots got fired.” She snapped, “I think I’m entitled to some answers.”

“Darling, please. Don’t act as though you haven’t faced hazards since getting your license.”

“Yeah, but I chose that. I chose to get into this business knowing that there are risks _while I am flying_. I didn’t sign up for danger planet-side.” No one said anything. “She was going to shoot me if I didn’t take her to you. She was going to kill me. That is not part of my job description.”

Mal had the grace to look chagrinned. So Ariadne asked her, “Why did you even take a contract with them in the first place?”

“We, Dom and I,” Mal said cutting off Eames who looked like he was building up to a spectacular tirade, “received funding from Cobol twelve years ago. It was the same time Yusuf got his grant to complete the BioDome. We took the contract because it was good money and it seemed like a good idea.” Ariadne opened her mouth, but Mal pressed on, “Cobol did not have the reputation they have today, Ariadne. There were no Council indictments, no disappearances, no” she waved her hands, grasping, “cyborg mercenaries. Receiving money from Cobol was not a bad idea. Back then.”

“Why did you back out?”

“Partly because of all those things I just mentioned. Cobol has become a very dangerous benefactor in recent years and we wanted to distance ourselves from them. And partly,” she glanced at Arthur, “partly because of my husband.”

“Is he dead?” Ariadne asked. Because that question had been bothering her since she first found the news briefs.

“If only,” Eames muttered.

Arthur grimaced, but he wouldn’t catch Ariadne’s eye. Mal kept talking, “He is under Cobol’s employ now, I think.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why is he working for them? Why isn’t he here?”

Now, Mal looked angry. She took in a deep breath, about to speak, but pursed her lips. It was a while before she spoke. “Dom and Arthur and I developed a programme. What we did not know,” she gestured to herself and Arthur, “was that it was a dangerous programme that interfered with the human-computer-interface.” She nodded at Ariadne’s screen implant. “I don’t—“ There was such a mess of emotions on her face: anger, sadness, and embarrassment. “I don’t want to get into the specifics. But it’s why Arthur and I can’t log into the ship’s network. The interference spreads.”

Ariadne’s eyes widened and she clutched at her wrist, the smooth screen on the outside, the raised lump of the porthole on the inside.

“It isn’t in the network. It’s not something that can upload to your system,” Mal said hurriedly. “But it manifests when we sign on. Causes problems with the way the ship runs. But it’s not…contagious.”

“That’s,” Ariadne narrowed her eyes, “a strange word choice.”

“It’s like a parasite. A virus,” Eames said.

“A virus. Like a computer virus? A hack?” Ariadne glanced at Eames. He nodded and Ariadne frowned. “You can’t hack an interface. It’s impossible. The Council—”

“Dom found a way,” Eames said.

Ariadne blinked at him then groped behind her for a chair and fell into it. “Why did you hire me?” she said after a very long silence. They all looked away. “You knew there was something wrong with you. You knew Cobol was after you and yet you brought me into this mess.” Her voice rose. “Why haven’t you gone to the Council? Why are you just pretending that everything’s ok?”

“We have approached a Council member,” Yusuf said. “We’re in talks. He’s certainly got a stake in publicizing Cobol’s indiscretions. So he’s listening.”

Ariadne stared at him, thought about their destination, and then the pieces fell together. “Proclus. Councilman Saito.”

He nodded.

“So you’re running from one corporate world to another.”

“No state has the clout that Saito has.” Mal said.

“Yeah, I hear it’s cumulative,” she replied bitterly. Councilman Saito had been on the Interplanetary Council for over three hundred years. While most moon states elected their Council Representatives, corporate worlds-- or cooperatives depending on whom you asked--had leaders assigned by birthright. But even among the five corporate moons, Saito had served for the longest of any Council member. His organs replaced one by one from petri dish clones. His genes tweaked every so often to prevent degeneration. Saito may not have been he oldest human being in the system, but his advanced age certainly contributed to his power.

“Well, no one has the level of power that the corporates have.” Eames said. “So, there aren’t a whole lot of options on that front.”

Ariadne nodded reluctantly. She said to Mal, “I’m sorry your husband was an asshole.” Both Eames and Arthur shot her a warning look, she ignored them. “But I’m not serving Proclus. I won’t. I’ve had too many friends sucked into the lure of corporate and I’m not doing it.”

“I understand.” Mal looked tired. “We hadn’t expected it to…We’ve been able to avoid them for months.”

“Don’t you think the Pelican in The Belt was meant to capture you?”

Mal frowned. “They must have had an eye out for our ship as well. I think it was an accident that they came across us. Bad luck. Nothing more.” She regarded Ariadne, “What I don’t understand is how they found you. How they found out where we’d chosen to sell and how they found you.” She spoke slowly as though thinking aloud, “An entire moon and they pinpointed your location to a cafe.”

Everyone stared at Ariadne. She stared back, confused.

“You don’t think it’s begun to change? Spread?” Arthur said.

Mal shook her head, still staring at Ariadne. “That wouldn’t make any sense. It would affect you and I, surely. But…what were you doing when Ren Hui approached you?”

“We don’t know that it was Ren Hui,” Yusuf said.

“It was her,” Arthur said. His tone suggested that he had met her before and it had been unpleasant.

Mal waved a hand. “Regardless, what were you doing?”

“I was just on the net.”

“Doing what?” Eames’ expression was intent.

Ariadne shrugged a shoulder, “Checking the news from back home.”

Eames drummed his fingers on his cot, but didn’t say anything else.

“If you don’t mind,” Mal said, “I’d like Yusuf to run a diagnostic.” She held up a hand to stay Ariadne’s protests. “It’s not invasive and I just want to be certain. I know you’re upset about the whole situation, but we wouldn’t have signed you on if we thought you were at any risk. And I don’t like not knowing if this…thing can spread.”

*****

Yusuf’s scan came up clean. For which Ariadne was grateful. They went back to their usual watches: Eames, AI, Ariadne, AI, repeat. Though since they were out of the shipping lanes, Eames and Ariadne put in more hours on the bridge and were on call while the AI steered them along.

Ariadne thought about what Mal had told her in the Med Bay. She wondered about the virus programme Dom had invented. Why he would do that to his wife. Why invent it at all. Most of all, she wondered what it did.

Eventually, her curiosity subdued her conscience and she pulled up the locations for the files she’d been reading at the cafe on Sobo. She ignored Yusuf’s research and zeroed in on Cobbs. The news briefs from the private, smaller-scale sources were interesting. They were often more opinion based, but several of them pointed out a number of flaws in the technology, the main one being ‘consent’. If a programme could implant information into someone’s mind, who was to say that they’d agreed to it? Although interface implants were widespread throughout the entire system, no one under the age of thirteen could get even the most basic network of iridium neural pins. It was a nuisance not to have an interface; watching Arthur and Mal struggle with having to retrofit everything was testament to that. But you had to say ‘yes’.

Ariadne was scanning through a raging debate in the comments section of one of the editorials when there was a knock on her door. She stood up to answer as she cleared the flies from the display.

It was Mal. She smiled hesitantly. “May I come in?"

Ariadne blinked and then stepped aside. “Yes. Of course.”

She cast about for something to sit on, but her cabin had a bed and little else. “Uhm. Here,” she gestured to the bed. “Sorry, I never got around to.” She was actually blushing. Mal had never visited. Now that she was here, Ariadne felt embarrassed about how spare her room was.

“Please, don’t worry,” Mal said, perching on the corner of the bed, “I know how hard it is to break old habits. Moving from contract to contract hardly leaves time to decorate.” She smiled ruefully.

“No.” Ariadne scratched at her head. Flashed a tight smile and sat on the other edge of the bunk. “Uh. What can I do for you?”

Mal took a deep breath. “Ariadne, listen. I am truly sorry that you got involved with this Cobol situation. I had honestly hoped that we could get this dealt with through Proclus. I wouldn’t have hired you on if I thought there was any real danger to you. Well, more danger than is expected in this line of work.”

“I understand,” she replied. Then shook her head. “No, I don’t. I’m not even going to pretend to. It’s messed up. But I get it.”She sighed, “Why did you even need a pilot anyway? Eames is way better than I am.”

A smiled flickered on Mal’s face. “Yes, but Eames is only one person. I’m not comfortable with the AI running for so long. And you are not bad. You lack experience, but that’s easily remedied.”

“Was it you and Eames? Before?”

“Yes. And Dom on occasion.” Her smile became sad. “He was not a very good pilot. He was a bit clumsy, but I was teaching him. A little pet project, you could say.”

“I’m sorry.”

Mal closed her eyes and sighed. “It’s not your fault, though I appreciate the sentiment.” When she opened them, her eyes were glassy. She cleared her throat, “The reason why I came down was to say that if you are very uncomfortable with entering Proclus space, we can drop you off at one of the neighboring moons. I would not hold it against you. I would be happy to recommend you to some other captains in the sector.”

Ariadne mulled this over for a moment. “And if I don’t want to get dropped off?”

“Well firstly, Arthur and I need surgery.”

“To replace the corrupted parts?”

Mal shook her head, “To replace the entire interface.”

Ariadne reared back in shock. “Is that…”

“Possible?” Mal stared at her lap. “Yes. Proclus is very permissive for a cooperative. Saito understands that people change their mind. So he’s had researchers developing procedure for decades. For his own people, it is free. To outsiders though—“ she grimaced.

“That’s why you need the money.”

“Yes. So Arthur and I could have our interfaces removed and then replaced. Then Saito will take our case to the council.”

“And then?”

“And then we will probably sail again. Cobol might try to retaliate, but hopefully, the Council will quash them.”

Ariadne’s brows rose. “Really? Over one programme?” It had happened before. If a state became too powerful or too dangerous to its neighbors,  the Council could vote to dissolve the state. Usurp the leadership and regulate the entire planet. It was a complicated and drawn out process and it hadn’t happened in Ariadne’s lifetime. Though to be fair, of all the moons, Cobol seemed like the most likely candidate.

“Among other things.” Mal replied. “Surely you are aware of the accusations against them. The evidence that we have will be the nail in the coffin.” She sighed, “We had high hopes for the project, blinded by our own naiveté and enthusiasm.”

“The interface education?”

Mal’s gaze snapped to hers. “I did not tell you about that.”

Ariadne blinked, and then bit her lip. “I may have done a little research on…you. And the ship.”

Mal paled. “When?”

“In Carrefour.”

“It was what you were looking at when Ren Hui found you.”

Ariadne nodded, confused.

Mal looked frightened now. “Have you looked at the briefings since we set off?”

“What?”

“Have you looked at those pages since we left Sobo?”

“Yes,” Ariadne admitted.

Mal stood abruptly. “Ariadne! Why did you lie? We have to change course. I can’t believe you—“ She darted to the door, but backpedaled wildly when it opened.

Dominic Cobb was nearly as handsome in real life as in his pictures. Except for the scar running down one side of his face and disappearing into his collar. Except for how he was missing an eye.

There was a shocked silence. Then Mal lunged for the cabin’s emergency call button but fell to the ground before she could reach it.

“Mal!” Ariadne jumped to her side, turned her over. She had hit her head on the metal floor, but not that hard. Her expression was blank, her eyes glazed and the pupils dilated. Ariadne could hardly see the blue of her irises. Black as Ren Hui’s. Ariadne tapped at Mal’s cheek, “Mal?”

“She’s alright.” Cobb said. Ariadne started and clutched Mal to her. He had crouched down with them; she hadn’t heard him get so close. He gave Mal a fond look, reached out to touch her hair.

Ariadne slapped his hand. “Don’t touch her!”

Dom snatched his hand back, but smiled. “I can see why she hired you.” He heaved himself up awkwardly, like he wasn’t used to gravity, then he peered around the room. Ariadne began sending out a message to Eames through the ship’s wireless network. Her ocular display blurred her vision so the click and Dom saying “Please don’t. I’d rather not get everyone all up in arms,” was confusing.

She sent the message off as it was, garbled pleas, too disjointed in her panic to be coherent. She looked up to see him pointing what looked like a gun at her.  He flashed a smile, but Ariadne was stuck on the fact that he was holding a gun. Only it couldn’t be a gun. Because no one in their right mind would fire a gun on a spaceship. Not when you lived in what could amount to a thin-shelled egg that kept the nothing out. A puncture and the nothing got in. The thought made Ariadne shiver.

Ariadne laid Mal gently on the cold deck and raised her arms.

“Thank you,” he said, with that strange smile. To Mal he said, “Mal. Get up.”

And she did.

Ariadne nearly sobbed. Sobbed at the vacant, mechanical way she moved. As though being pulled on puppet strings.

“You too. Ariadne, was it?” when she didn’t move, he waved the gun, “Up, up. Let’s go.”

“I’m not getting off this ship with you.”

He blinked. “No. Of course not. We’re just going to the bridge. It’s not far.”

“I know where it is. And, no.”

The smile faded at the edges, “Come now, or I’ll just shoot you and leave you to bleed.”

“You wouldn’t fire that in here.”

Dom’s smile bloomed Cheshire cat wide, “Really?” He cocked his head. “Eames teaching you to gamble, huh?” Ariadne’s breathing became rabbit fast. “I really don’t have a whole lot to lose, in case you didn’t know. I am a very good shot

Ariadne stood and stepped towards him. “Good girl,” he said. He said to Mal, “To the bridge, please.”

 

Ariadne felt queasy as they walked down the cabin hall and towards the spoke to the ship’s core and the bridge. With Mal’s behavior and the gun pressed against her spine, she was too panicked to use her messaging system. She obviously couldn’t radio Eames, but every text message she sent was just a panicked _Help!_

They reached the entrance to the spoke, just at the edge of the living quarters and the BioDome. There was an interface access panel beside the door. Dominic hobbled forwards, lifted the panel’s lid and unspooled the port line. “Mal, sweetheart, I need you to log in please.”

Mal took the line jerkily and jammed it into her wrist port. Dom tapped something onto his own interface screen and the entire habitat jolted. Ariadne staggered and crashed against the wall. “What are you doing?”

“What the hell?” Arthur’s voice boomed from down the curved hall.

Ariadne gasped. He couldn’t come down here. If this was what the programme did, the virus, he couldn’t get close to Dom. “Arthur!“ Mal clamped a hand down on Ariadne’s mouth. She struggled, but Mal’s grip was implacable. Arthur came around the bend.

“Ariadne?” Arthur called out, and then he came into view. “Mal what are you—“ and Dom was on him. “The fuck?” Mal tossed Ariadne aside and went to Dom’s aid.

“Eames!” Arthur and Dom  bounced against the walls, staggering in the waning gravity.  Arthur was lithe as an eel. He would have gotten away if Mal hadn’t trundled into him.

Ariadne had fallen and was overcome with vertigo. She squeezed her eyes shut as she staggered to her feet, crashing against the wall for support. When she opened her eyes again, Arthur was limp in Dom and Mal’s grip. “No!” Ariadne tried to run forward, but felt so violently ill that she had to close her eyes again.

Then, the spoke-hatch clunked open, “Ari? What’s going--?”

Then, gunfire. A yell. Ariadne’s eyes snapped open. Dom was foundering backwards, expression gleeful. Eames was bleeding against the wall and groping for the BioDome door button. Dom fired again, but too quickly. He hadn’t steadied himself, the decreasing gravity skewed his aim. A bullet cracked through the spoke hull, but another caught Eames in the shin, his howling drowned out the ominous hiss as the habitat depressurized. Ariadne lunged for the button Eames was scrabbling for, slammed on it, and the door opened steadily. Dom took aim again, but the habitat emergency lights flared, red flashing on and off, the siren blaring. There was a crunch. Even Eames, face contorted in pain, stared at the spoke. Another crunch and the hissing became a loud sucking noise. Ariadne dragged Eames through to the habitat just as the door began its emergency close.

Mal and Arthur! She looked at them. Their faces were blank except for their eyes. They were wide, bulging.

The BioDome door slammed shut. Through the glass Ariadne saw the trio on the other side run down the hall. Likely to another safe point.

She looked down at Eames. Blood, sharp and copper-smelling, oozed from between his fingers which were clutched against his chest. The leg of his jumpsuit was steadily staining. “Shit. Fuck, Eames.” She hovered over him, unsure of what to do first. She radioed Yusuf.

 

 

*****

The habitat’s rotation was slowing. She didn’t know what Dominic had done, but it likely altered their course. Eames was in agony, but able to walk. Together they staggered through the BioDome, which was steadily falling apart without the artificial gravity.

She did her best to wave the leaf litter out of the way as it ascended and hovered at chest height. The trees were faring better, but some of the younger ones had been rattled by the initial jolt. Already they were drifting away from the ground like balloons. A handful of roots the only thing tethering them to the soil. Through the fear, Ariadne felt a pang of pity for Yusuf as his experiment broke apart around them.

They were a mess, soil stuck to their sweat and in their hair, by the time they reached the Med Bay. “Help him up. Get him on the table.” Yusuf said. Eames’ breathing was labored, but they got him on the examination table. She pressed against the wound at the side of his chest. Yusuf examined her tourniquet, her scarf as tight as she could manage just above Eames’ knee. It must have reached his approval because he nodded and went straight for snaps of Eames’ coveralls.

“I don’t think the chest one is deep.” Eames said between pants.

“I’ll be the judge of that. You’re in shock.” Yusuf replied. “Ariadne, go wash your hands.”

She came back from the sink to find Eames’s coveralls zipped down to the hips. Yusuf was in the middle of cutting away Eames’ binder. “Gloves,” Yusuf said.

“Right.”

Eames’s arms and collarbones were covered in Saxon-style tattoos: a winged _wyvern_ , an ornate knot of lines and leaves stretching from shoulder to shoulder across his chest. Blue-black ink covering his belly, bulging out from the edge of the tank-top.

“What do you need me to do?” Ariadne said.

Yusuf made the final cut. “Meds. Go into the cabinet and bring the box labeled ‘analgesics’,” Yusuf said.

*****

The chest wound wasn’t deep. Eames was right on that count. It had pierced through his intercostals, but nothing more. The leg was problematic. The tourniquet helped. But the blood vessel was between the bones of the shin so he would need surgery, which was outside of Yusuf’s expertise.

“I’m a medic, not a surgeon,” he sighed. “One of the droids could manage the surgery. I’m sure the AI has the software. But with Dom on the ship, I can’t risk it.” He had managed to reestablish the habitat’s spin, and though it was slower than usual,at least they had some gravity. But he had to shut off network access through the habitat to stop Dom from messing with things again. The only places where the network was accessible were the bridge and the engine room.

“Am I going to lose the leg, then?” Eames asked from where he was swaddled on a cot. Yusuf had given him a local anesthesia rather than opiates, so he was far more lucid than Ariadne would be if she had just gotten shot.

Yusuf rubbed at his face, “ _If_ we make it out of this mess, I’m afraid that might be the case.”

Eames dragged a hand through his hair. “We need to get to Proclus.”

“We’re going to Proclus,” Ariadne said from her seat at the edge of the examination table.

“Yeah, in another four weeks. If we get there without the rest of Cobol descending upon us and without the ship collapsing in on itself. Who knows the impact being hooked up to Cobb will have.”

“What do you mean?” Ariadne asked.

“Dominic Cobb is mentally unstable,” Yusuf said with a scowl, “The reason why Eames cottoned on to the interface virus in the first place was because it was disrupting Arthur and Mal’s behavior. Cognitive impairment, memory loss. They were a mess. We thought they were sick, at first. It took months for the effects to wear off after Dom was gone.”

“Oh and the fact that they were walking around like puppets wasn’t a give away.”

Eames sneered, but Yusuf cut him off. “Dom is unstable, but not stupid. His ‘trials’ were short and done either while Eames was on watch or while I was busy.” His expression was rueful. “It took us months to catch on.”

“What would a few months do to them?"

“The damage could be irreparable, even if we aren’t overrun by Cobol agents. Or, as Eames said, the ship doesn’t collapse. It shouldn’t. But…”

“Why does Cobol even want that kind of technology? It’s not as though they don’t have control over their own population.”

Eames and Yusuf looked at one another. “We think,” Yusuf said delicately, “that they were no longer interested in controlling just their population.” When she remained silent he looked at her, considering. “What do you know about colonialism, Ariadne?”

Ariadne arched a brow, surprised at the sudden veering into ancient histories. “Ancient earth practice. Catastrophic.”

“For the losers,” Eames said.

“What?”

“It was catastrophic for the losers. But for the colonizers, bloody marvelous.”

“No. It was catastrophic for everyone. In the end. And besides, you need to wage war. Kill people. You don’t-” She shook her head, “It isn’t done.”

Eames pursed his lips.

“They’re planning a war?” she gasped. They nodded. “But, why?” She shook her head again, “There is no need. If you’re careful, you shouldn’t have to squabble like animals. There should be enough.”

“Cobol’s been practically breeding themselves out of house and home for decades, love. Centuries, almost. The fuddy-duddies in the Council never put their foot down and this is where we’re at.” Eames’ expression was dark. “And why would you breed yourself into a corner if not to build an army?”

“Ok. So,” she gestured across the habitat to where Dom and Mal and Arthur were taking refuge, on the other side of the hull breach, “brain control technology,” she waved a hand a Yusuf, “plants. Food, stuff. Ok, lots of food and other stuff. But how is that evidence for Cobol’s plans for war?”

“There are other things. The Pelican vessels. You don’t need stealth vessels unless you’re being sneaky.” Eames began counting off on his fingers, “They’ve been signing loads of defensive technology contracts, contracts for mining tools, cutting lasers and such, but anything can be a weapon if you point it at a person. There was also, back in the day, a lot of research going into genomic tweaking. And then there’s,” here he hesitated, “Arthur’s project.”

“What’s Arthur’s project? I didn’t” she coughed, “Ren Hui didn’t say anything about Arthur.”

“Well, it’s a bit top-secret.”

“And plans for war aren’t?”

Eames eyed her speculatively. “Arthur’s been working on near-light-speed travel.”

Ariadne scoffed, “It’s not possible.”

“Yes, it is.” Eames smoothed the blanket over his lap, “I know you think it’s silly, but it is absolutely possible. Arthur’s been working on it for years. And it works.”

Ariadne blinked, “On Cobol’s dime.”

“Yes.”

“How would that even be useful. You slingshot ships out super fast and then, ten years later they get somewhere. Sounds more like interstellar goals that plans for conquest. The accuracy alone would be a waste of time within the system.”

Eames cut her off. “Arthur has the accuracy down to one hundred kilometers.” There was a smile playing on his lips, “That is more than enough to get from one moon to another within the same planetary orbit.”

Ariadne reeled. That was like a human landing on the head of a pin after a running jump. “You’ve done it?”

Eames nodded.

“How,” her voice came out hoarse, “how fast?”

“Twenty percent,” Eames said. And here he looked smug on Arthur’s behalf.

“Wow.” Despite all of this mess and the fear (so much fear) Ariadne felt a girlish wonder steal over her. Twenty percent of light speed.  Ever since the old generational-vessels, humans had been chasing the dream of light speed. Before humans even left the Sol system.

“What about the time dilation? I mean, you travel at that kind of speed, you still get to where you’re going in real time. It doesn’t make your trip faster.”

Eames shook his head, “Yes, it does. Here: picture droves of soldiers packed onto a ship like sardines for a journey from Cobol to, say, Sobo.”

“It would take months. They’d run out of food. They’d go nuts.”

Eames raised a finger, “Not if the trip was only a few hours. A day or two at the longest. You send these bright-eyed, frothing soldiers out and before the sweat from training has dried they’re at their first attack point.”

Ariadne gaped. “Holy shit.”

“Why was Arthur even involved?”

“Your first instinct, for interstellar travel, was correct,” Yusuf said. “That was the intention behind this project.” He waved an arm around them, encompassing the ship, “This vessel. The migration from Sol to this system was disastrous. Truly horrific. You’ve learned about it in school?”

Ariadne nodded.

“If we wanted to make a jump to another system it would have to be smoother. Time is the enemy. And,” he added, “our own physical limitations.”

“The BioDome,” Ariadne said.

Yusuf inclined his head in acknowledgement.

They lapsed into silence for some time before Ariadne said, “So, this ship can go at twenty percent.”

“Yes,” Eames answered immediately.

“Can we do it now?”

“Do what?” Yusuf’s eyes narrowed.

“Go at twenty percent.” She stood. “It would cut down the trip, wouldn’t it? For us.”

“No,” Yusuf said. “I’m not comfortable doing that.”

“Well, I’m not comfortable with Arthur hooked up to that arsehole. And let’s be honest,” Eames gestured to his leg, “I’ll probably bleed out before we even get there if we drag this out.”

Yusuf looked away. “How are _you_ getting to the bridge? Ariadne’s never piloted near-light-speed.” He turned to her, “You’re very, very good, but this is a different animal entirely.” He glared at Eames, “So you’ll have to do it. And, someone will need to be in the engine room. And, oh look, we don’t have an Arthur. Nor do we have the fuel to spare. And as your medical advisor, I can’t advise than many hours of NLS flight. You’ve done it for two, three hours at a stretch. What you two are arguing for is six hours. On top of the fatigue. On top of the stress.”

“The AI can take care of the engine room. Arthur programmed the protocol. And I know we have enough fuel because Arthur hoards fuel like a bloody squirrel,” Eames said.

“Alright, but-”

“The droids.” Ariadne was pacing now. “Eames can link with a droid and walk me through it. I know there are some on this end. Eames doesn’t have to move and we can bypass the interface ports on this end. The signal would be wireless. I can pilot us out to less inhabited space and Eames can fire up the NLS thing.”

Eames raised his brows and nodded.

Yusuf folded his arms. “How are you getting to the bridge with your Eames-droid?”

They fell silent before Eames and Ariadne both lit up and said in unison, “The airlocks.”

*****

There were airlocks dotted along the habitat, and one was located just beyond Yusuf’s lab. Fortunately, there were suits at this airlock station and a pair of repair droids.

Eames came in through her interface, “Alright, love. The interface for the receiver, inside the main cavity.” Ariadne peered up at the droid; she could just reach the main cavity if she stood on her tiptoes. But it was a simple task, and in no time the first and then the second droid shivered to life, clanking back and forth against the deck on dexterous legs, looking for all the world like a pair of giant daddy longlegs.

Using the droids’ cameras, Eames was able to help her suit up. Then he helped her apply the van der Waals pads to her boots and knees and arms. It looked like her forearms and kneepads were covered in ridged scales.

There was a hiss as the airlock depressurized and then silence when the door opened. Ariadne took a deep breath, and then stepped out onto the hull of _La Rêveuse._

One droid clambered away to patch the hull breach in the habitat. All things considered, it was an easy task since the offending area was segregated. Ariadne and the other Eames-droid made their way along the habitat to the fore of the ship.

When they reached the peak of the habitat Ariadne glanced behind her and caught sight of a Pelican tethered to the stern. “Eames.” She pointed. The droid turned.

Eames swore and said, “Dom can’t fly one of those.”

Then Ariadne was slammed forwards. The van der Waal forces secured her boots to the hull and she didn’t go spiraling into space. But her face smacked into her visor and something wrenched in her knee. “Eames!”

Ariadne turned in time to see a figure crouched over her. Through the visor she could see a pair black eyes. Dark from lid to lid, no sclera.

A metal fist crashed into her visor with a blow that made her jaw snap. Ariadne tried to shove her off. Another blow. The visor was meant to withstand the cosmic radiation, it was meant to hold against the vacuum of space. There was a crack.

“Eames!” She struggled again, but the cyborg held firm. “Eames!”

She turned and heaved with her hips, bucking the cyborg loose. Ariadne scrabbled along the hull,  the pads giving her some leverage on the slick surface, but it wasn’t nearly enough. The droid shot past her, aimed for Ren Hui who wrenched the droid’s legs free and threw its body away where it bounced soundlessly against the hull. Ariadne reached for one of the droid’s limbs, the severed edge sparking and sharp. She turned and drove it as hard as she could into the cyborg.

It punctured her suit and came up against resistance. Ariadne frowned and then Ren Hui struck back sending her sprawling. Through the spreading crack Ariadne saw Eames’s droid come at the cyborg again.

Ariadne staggered away. She needed to get inside. The visor crack was branching out like roots. Eames’ droid gripped Ren Hui around the middle and flung her away.

Ariadne’s visor failed and the glass imploded in her face.

She exhaled ard and ran to the bridge. She had just fifteen seconds before she would pass out.

Her sinuses protested. They felt huge in her skull.

There was no moisture on her tongue that was swelling to fill her mouth. Instinct drove her to inhale and animal panic flooded her when there was nothing to take in. She was on her knees now. Her hands slid on the slick golden surface of the hull when she tried to crawl.

“Ari!” Eames was coming in through the interface. But she couldn’t reply. She staggered as far as she could and then crawled.

Darkness was creeping into her vision. Like the whole world was being viewed through a vignette. Something tightened around her waist. The world got smaller and smaller. The hull sped beneath her and then the darkness constricted shut.

*****

 

At first, there was only the sound of her breathing. In and out. In and out in the darkness. A red light flicked on.

“Ari.” Eames’ voice. “Ariadne. Get up. Can you sit up?” he was coming in through her interface. Ariadne focused her eyes- they felt swollen in their sockets- and peered directly into a dark circle so close she had to cross her eyes to focus on it. She blinked; the ring retracted, contracted, pulsed with a whirring noise. Her brows knit and she blinked again. “Ariadne, can you sit up?” she nodded. The circle drew back. It was the droid. The droid’s camera. “Ariadne, sweetheart, I need you to move. Can you do that?” Her face felt raw and sticky. She raised a hand to touch it.

“Ah, ah,” Eames said. The droid’s grip was gentle. “Don’t. You’re face is a bit of a mess right now, love.”

“Ren-“ her throat felt like it had been sliced open, “Ren Hui?”

“I don’t know. The AI’s not picking her up and the Pelican is gone. But we need to get going.”

Ariadne nodded. “What—“ Her lungs felt cut all the way down, deep in her chest. “What do you need me to do?” she whispered.

“The hull patch is sorted. The AI has primed the engine. I need you to pilot us out of the lanes and into open space and then we’ll open the taps.”

Ariadne reached for the port, plugging herself and then the droid in.

There were engines roaring. The chemical engines and the ion rockets and two kinds of plasma rockets. It sent a shiver through her to feel all of that power.

“Alright,” Eames sent a protocol her way. “So, first things first…”

They got control of the ship. Ariadne was right; Dom had done something to its course when he’d disrupted the habitat. It took a few moments of chart scanning to find the best route to open space. And then a few minutes of course correcting to find the right trajectory.

The buildup wasn’t that much harder than flying at high speed. There was just a lot of power. As they got closer and closer to the uninhabited zone, the secondary plasma rockets began lurching them forward at regular intervals.

“Ariadne, I’m activating the shield system now.” Ariadne nodded, her focus narrowed down to holding the course steady. The problem with hurtling at two hundred and fifteen _million_ kilometers an hour was that hitting anything, anything at all, would be explosive. The smallest micro-meteorite, the tiniest dust cloud would be disastrous. Hence the shields. Arthur was a genius. When they got out of this mess-- and Ariadne had already decided that they would make it-- she was going to tell him that he was the most brilliant genius ever.

Through the bridge windows she saw the shield rise away from the hull like a blister. It glowed violet, shimmered and crackled, igniting in spots when it hit space detritus.

She shuddered at the feel of the ion jets blasting them forward. They had already broken through the first one percent. And despite the fear and anxiety, there was exultation. The buzz of her first draw to shipping, to space flight. The speed. Literally astronomical speeds.

 

Three hours in they reached ten percent and the time dilation became more pronounced. Her ocular implant tracked the progress of _La Rêveuse_ and those of the planets, the moons spinning and drifting. Time passed outside. Time passed inside. But _La Rêveuse_ was going faster, so time was faster. Every blink was an hour. She straddled ship time and the time outside, the algorithm calculating the progression of time outside their little flaming capsule. Even Eames had fallen silent.

By the ship's calculations, it would take another ten minutes to reach twenty percent. Then they could cut the engines and save enough fuel to slow down. 

She was lost in the calculations, in the flex and pull of time around them, crackling against the shield. She didn’t realize someone else was on the bridge until there was an arm around her throat.

She writhed and clawed, her attention dragged away from the stars stretching past and leaving Eames alone to pilot through the wireless connection. "Ari?" Eames called, the droid’s camera focused on the starscape ahead. "Ari!”

She struggled, clawed at the forearm around her throat. She managed to get in a breath, "It’s Dom!"

"Shit. Ari. Ari, I can't--"

"Fly. Just-- fuck." She pistoned her fist up and connected with hard plastic. Her knuckles were sliced against it, but Dom’s grip slackened. She punched up again, connected with flat bone, forehead. Again, soft eye socket.

She unbuckled her harness and turned in time to see a blade arcing towards her. She launched herself up and away, bounced against glass of the bridge ceiling.

Dom came after her, far more accustomed to navigating microgravity, by the look of it. The droid now just became an obstacle to avoid; Eames was unable to tear his gaze away from their heading.

Dom adjusted his grip and lunged. Ariadne, cornered on Mal’s chair, tried to dodge but she was too slow. Her mind was still tangled in the time outside. Her arm exploded in pain as the knife sliced in. She kicked. The years of weight training, running from bone loss, funneled into the blow that sent Dom crashing into the bridge wing hard enough to stun him.

Ariadne grasped at her arm and moaned. Text scrolled across the inside of her eyelids: Ariadne had a five percent chance of surviving the knife fight, the AI informed her. Through the interface, she was _La Rêveuse._ She was ion thrusters and fractured hydrogen and she was a punctured hull from Dom's bullets. 

She grabbed Dom by the collar and shoved him through the airlock door, slamming it shut behind him. He blinked at her blearily as she lifted the safety cover and slammed the ‘Vent’ button with her bloody palm. Dom was sucked out into space violently, only to be caught on the inside of the ship's shield, like a bug in a web.

If he’d had airto scream he would have. Electricity writhed over his body, questing like roots burrowing into him. It burned him to dust. It took hours. It took a moment.

“Ari?” Eames came in through her implant, “What happened? Ariadne?”

She clambered back to her seat, strapped her seatbelt and focused on the job. “Tell Yusuf he should go find Mal and Arthur.”

 

 

 

 

 

*****

Eames was smoking on one of the clinic’s patios when Ariadne found him. “Hey.”

Eames glanced at her sidelong then back up at the sky, at the slate-coloured face of Benzaiten. “Hello.” There was the sound of night bugs and distant waves.

Ariadne shuffled closer, the scabs on her face itched. “Any word on how things are progressing?” They had gotten Arthur and Mal off the ship. But Dom’s death while they were connected to him had done something. They were in control of themselves, but there was something vacant about them. Distant, as though they weren’t all there. Saito’s teams were running tests. 

“They’ll take out the interfaces once they’ve finished re-constructing the software,” Eames said.

“You mean the virus.”

“Yes.”

Ariadne huffed, “That’s not sketchy at all.”

“I would pull the interface out myself if I thought it would do any good.” The words came out of his mouth in smoke. He took another drag and exhaled.  “Saito’s aid has been the only thing we worked towards. We hadn’t come up with an alternative.”

“You trust him?”

“No,” he replied. Ariadne looked at him, surprised. He gave her a wry smile, “Cobol is not a good enemy to have. But, ‘the enemy of my enemy’ and all that. Proclus has phenomenal resources.” He patted his leg. They had managed to save it, though the blood vessels had to be replaced with synthetic ones. “And if they can help Arthur-- Well, I have no problem with being under their employ for the rest of my life if it comes to it.”

 

 

 

Yusuf was a biological engineer. He had a smattering of programming in his background but nothing to rival Dom’s or Arthur’s-- not even Mal’s-- programming skills. So the fact that it had taken Proclus’ researchers a handful of weeks to reconstruct the programme when Yusuf had made no progress in understanding it surprised no one.

Proclus was one of those water moons with no dry land. Most humans lived below the ocean’s surface. But for the ease of the researchers, Arthur and Mal were monitored at a clinic in one of the floating cities. This was just as well. They probably wouldn’t have done well underwater. Mal liked to see the sun and the birds and the cherry blossoms blooming in the clinic’s courtyard whenever Ariadne took her for a stroll. But before too long Mal would sadly complain about being cold, despite being bundled in scarves and blankets. Ariadne would frown and glance up at the sun beaming down before wheeling Mal back inside. Arthur didn’t seem to be doing much better.

 

It was Eames’ turn to find Ariadne, though she was at a different patio. This one had a canal running by it, reef fish drifting in the clear water. She was contemplating taking her shoes off and seeing how warm the water was.

Eames sat down and lit a cigarette, not bothering to offer her one. Ariadne wondered idly where he was even getting them. But she decided that it was none of her business.

Eames was nearly down to the filter when he said, “I don’t blame you or anything.” Ariadne remained silent. He sighed, “You didn’t have a whole lot of options. And it’s not as though I hadn’t tried to kill the bastard myself.” She glanced up at Eames to find him bearing a smirk, “You think he just lost that eye on his own?”

“No.” In the water a pair of orange fish were chasing a larger blue fish away. “No, I didn’t really have time to give it much thought.”

“I suppose not.”

“They wouldn’t have found them in the first place if I hadn’t gone prying,” Ariadne’s shoulders hunched. “I know Mal’s out of it, but she would have told you that. Told you that I’d been searching the network for you guys.”

Eames pressed his cigarette into the stone and pocketed the stub. “She told me, yes.”

 

Saito came down to meet Arthur and Mal personally the day before their surgery. His visit had probably been as much of a shock to Ariadne and Eames as it had been to the Proclus scientists. He was very polite and attentive when Arthur and Mal. Ariadne wasn’t sure that she liked him. He looked no more than fifty years old, maybe a very healthy sixty. It was alarming considering that he had been alive for so long. Saito told them, unprompted that he needed Dom’s programme as evidence to the Council against Cobol.

Later, after Eames and Arthur had fallen asleep, wrapped round one another on Arthur’s cot, it was just Mal and Ariadne. Mal’s hair had been shaved off.

“This is a huge risk,” Ariadne said.  Mal nodded with her eyes closed. “Is it worth it?”

Mal opened her eyes, dark rimmed, even the blue of them dulled by pervasive fatigue. “I have been a pilot nearly all my life. Dominic took that away from me by breaking into my mind.” She shook her head, “I want my life back. I don’t care how.”

 

 

 

 


End file.
